Expat technology: the Lion roars

So Apple has released its latest operating system (OS X Lion) into the wild and according to one report I read on the first day the company sold 50 copies of the operating system for every living African Lion after which it was named. That means they sold over one million copies on the first day, and as you would expect the adoring Fan Boys have given it a pretty overwhelming thumbs up, with 87% of the 10,000 reviews on the Apple Store giving it five stars.

I have downloaded it and it is pretty impressive, although that is not the reason for this post. At the moment the only option is to download it from the Apple Store, which is fine but if you are on a slow broadband connection, or have multiple Macs then you are going to be sat waiting a long time. Not as long as you will wait for the thumb drive version though which is due out in August.

So here is a tip for how to save yourself a lot of time and create a backup DVD of your OS X Lion download which you can then use to install on your other Mac’s. It is also pretty useful should you want or need to reinstall as again, the option at the moment is to re download the software.

The Lion installer downloads to your Applications folder so if you want to burn a boot image of the installer just grab a DVD with 4GB of save, or a flash drive or hard drive partition will do) and then follow these steps:

Purchase and download Lion from the Mac App Store. When downloaded it will be added to your Dock and Applications folder, but do not proceed with the installation and instead quit the store and close the installer if it has automatically opened.

At this point you can either create the installation disc, or you can copy the installer to a backup location so you can create the installation disc at a later point.

Right-click the installer and choose Show Package Contents. (Note: You will see an option in the menu to burn the item to disc, but do not use this as it will only burn the item as-is and the resulting disc will not be bootable.)

You can then copy the file to your storage medium. For more details on how to do that see this CNET Review

A recurring theme of a number of my recent posts has been the issue of security so it would be remiss of me not to point out this excellent article which explains the enhanced security features of OS X Lion (10.5.7)

The most important addition is full ASLR. Short for address space layout randomization, the protection makes it much harder for attackers to exploit bugs by regularly changing the memory location where shell code and other system components are loaded. Other improvements include security sandboxes that tightly restrict the way applications can interact with other parts of the operating system and full disk encryption that doesn’t interfere with other OS features.

Chris runs the expat blog Almerimar Life covering subjects like expat finance, expat insurance and general advice for expats. He blogs about his life in Spain with his wife Sands, four cats, two Harley Davidsons and (far too often) a glass of red wine. A monthly columnist with the Telegraph Expat he is a regular contributor on a number of local and national papers and radio stations.